"I pointed it out to her as clearly as I could. I'm all at sea, Lester."

Well, if even he were beginning to doubt, matters were indeed serious!

"It's incomprehensible!" I sighed, after a moment's confused thought. "It's——"

"Yes—past believing."

"But the coachman——"

"The coachman's evidence, I fear, won't help us much—rather the reverse."

I actually gasped for breath—I felt like a drowning man from whose grasp the saving rope had suddenly, unaccountably, been snatched.

"In that case——" I began, and stopped.

"Well, in that case?"

"We must find some other way out," I concluded lamely.